Chapter 11 - Onggi

Yi Jeong exhaled slowly and squeezed his eyes shut at the first tremor of a migraine, a cur biding its time at the base of his skull. The migraine shared rent with Hae-Ryeon's maternal haranguing, exchanging ways to make Yi Jeong more miserable. He reached to find a memory that was smooth and supple so that he could re-braid his frayed nerves. Behind the dull drumming of pain, he saw a hill of cool white snow, her face smirking, eyelashes lifted towards the mountain and laughing. His arms were around Ga Eul. He remember the sickening dread seconds before a careless snowboarder almost pummeled her. He felt the fear, cold in his gut, her eyes were closed, but then her thick eyelashes fluttered open and she laughed like she had won the lottery. Yi Jeong let the memory sooth him before the all the discoveries of the day flung themselves, unwelcomed, in his conscience.

The financial problems at Woo Song were worse than he imagined. For nearly ten years, Woo Song tittered at the edge of financial failure, they carried more debt than the museum could possibly raise or produce in the future. The unassailable armada of the So Trust was a mirage, hiding the leaky rowboat that Hyun Sub and Ok Gyun were desperately patching. Yi Jeong saw through all the boisterous promises for the future. The So Trust was tightening its belt, even as Ok Gyun's birthday celebration was under way. The grey faced men of the board only nodded along to Hyun Sub's flashy presentation, which spoke volumes about the lack of funds by its very omission. Bread and circus, Yi Jeong thought, as his mouth coated with a sour taste. He was going to be the captain of a ship that was already underwater.

His mother and Hyun Sub avoided the subject of money like a contact disease. The So wealth was already comfortably secured before Hyun Sub was born and his mother's family had money older than the republic of Korea, his parents' hands never dirtied with the thought of, the distribution of, or the creation of money. Hae-Ryeon probably never counted out change in her life; the immense Park wealth could be seen in Hae-Ryeon's precise social graces, her thick silk blouses spun from silkworms that probably had more pedigree than Jian Di, and the kind of deep malaise only the truly indolent understood. He was the third generation, twice removed from the making of money. When he was younger, he thought that money was a renewable resource, like the sun or water.

He sat in his studio, the thick proposal that Chae Yong-Joon had presented ripped into five different sections, each inch of paper was thickly underlined and cross referenced with colored tabs. Staring dumbly at the same chart that had puzzled him at the meeting, Yi Jeong's mind saw numbers float in front of his eyes and then slipped away like a fish. No amount of corporate finance at INSEAD prepared him for this. He felt like he was five years old again, trapped in the box hedge maze of his grandfather's house. It simply didn't add up; the attendance at Woo Song had only increased in the last decade, their fund raising activities had kept pace with all the other museums in Korea. Why the leaky boat? Why the dire financial forecast?

Yi Jeong remembered the great weight of the So Trust on his shoulder as soon as he turned ten years old and Grandfather Ok Gyun determined that his older brother lacked the artistry and skill to be the face of the family. Maybe it was lucky that Yi Hyun was forced out of the family. He made a good living as the owner of a cafe, freed from familial obligation, and living with Eun Chae. He was happy. Yi Jeong winced. For more times that Yi Jeong liked to admit, he envied his brother. After all, he had gotten to marry the woman he loved; Hae-Ryeon didn't have to explain to him that all women who married into the So family were doomed.

He slid down in his chair and his eyes landed on the ceramic vase that Woo Bin and he used as a bet over for a girl's number. The vase sat comfortably in the neighborhood of ten million won; it didn't look markedly different than factory produced items, but it was the slight imperfections of hand work that added up to a perfect whole. As his chin hit his chest, Yi Jeong forgot his admiration and focused on the possible returns. The vase looked like two weeks of operation costs at Woo Song. How many similar pieces could he unload onto the market?

Chae Yong Joon's plan was a good plan, he targeted the weakest part of the Woo Song portfolio, suggesting that they sell the weaker currency bonds and unload the devaluing Japanese stocks. Then, he felt a small cut of injury, inflamed by slights and misinformation, kindled into a burst of anger. Yi Jeong felt hot, furious that his father never let on that the foundation was in dire straits. He seethed that his grandfather relied on a wet behind the years Chae Yong Joon to carry out his plans. Yi Jeong grabbed his leather jacket and metro pass. He needed air.

The open air onggi market was frigid in November. The Chae women, Ga Eul and her mother, Shin-Hye, exhaled little plumes of white air vapors. They passed by a small fire with chestnuts snapping at the heat on their metal grate bed. The toasted smell of roasting nuts filled Shin-Hye's nostrils and her stomach reminded her that lunch was five hours ago. The market laid wide, made of narrow warrens, built by clay vessels of every shape and hue; they created a strange low city. The people looked like giants, walking among the little city's walls; the denizens of this clay city were the inscrutable housewives, who played their interest in each household item like a high stakes poker game. Every so often, a merchant screeched a clearance special, but mostly the market was full of experts that knew exactly what they wanted and who to get it from. The housewives of Seoul didn't mince words lightly when it came to the onggi pot. Three jars of onggi, almost chest high, could provide an entire family a winter's worth of preserved vegetables. Kimchi could not be taken lightly. Shin-Hye saw her daughter bargaining with the ahjussi, but she could hear from Ga Eul's voice that she was one minute away from kicking the onggi merchant somewhere painful. The flicks of spittle on the man's chin collected into a rivulet, Ga Eul grimaced and shot back with a lower price—Shin-Hye hurried over—the man was one more violent outburst from a rainstorm of spit. Her daughter hated bargaining, but it was polite to bargain with the merchant. It showed them that you weren't soft.

Shin-Hye, an energetic woman in her fifties with a permanent that was more helmet than hair, treasured the time with her only child. Ga Eul puzzled her. Her daughter day dreamed about soul mates during high school, but Shin-Hye thought that puberty and all its excess would bring a sense of girly wisdom. Instead, as Ga Eul got prettier, she might as well have gotten better at science for all the womanly wisdom she acquired. Then for a few months, her daughter had a crush that she didn't want to talk about. When that crush ended, Ga Eul's romantic yearnings seem to take on a pragmatic finish.

After college, she thought that Ga Eul would be more like the girls of her generation when she secured her prestigious teaching job. After all, Ga Eul was a government worker who looked she could be a fresh faced catalogue model, a model wife of every red-blooded Seoul man. Shin-Hye had daydreamed about a string of adorable suitors that her daughter would bring home, and she would turn her gimlet eye on these men if they dared to be step out of line.

Instead, Shin-Hye had to cajole her friends for suitable sons, her family for likely connections; she harangued her husband for co workers. Ga Eul politely went out with every one, but Shin-Hye knew that her daughter went through the motions without any real intention. Up until a year ago, Shin-Hye feared that Ga Eul would be a leftover woman. Her daughter enjoyed her work like other girls would enjoy trips to a shaved ice parlor; this only prompted Shin-Hye to worry more that her little one's happiness could be stifled if she never found love or family. Then Ga Eul met Anders, and to Shin-Hye's own great surprise, she liked foreigner; he was handsome like many westerners, but that wasn't the reason. Shin-Hye caught Ga Eul in one of her shy moods with Anders, a secretive expression that was meant for no one else than her boyfriend. This made Shin-Hye's stop in surprise, she recognized that face, it was the same look on her face twenty-six years ago when she first saw Ga Eul's father.

"Omoni," Ga Eul was saying.

"Sorry, I wasn't listening." Shin-Hye blinked back into the present.

"I finally picked out my bridesmaid dress today."

"Really," Shin-Hye smiled, "what does it look like?"

"Hmm, I don't think you would like it, but Jian Di does." Ga Eul paused at new stall, filled with heavy white porcelain, impractical for pickling vegetables.

"Well, whatever Jian Di wants. After all this planning, Ga Eul, does it make you think about weddings in the future?"

Ga Eul grimaced. She could feel her mother's subtlety from a mile away.

"It's nice to help Jian Di because she's so busy with her residency." Ga Eul shrugged. "I can't complain about trying on a few more dresses when she's operating on children."

"But my dear, it's not like you're not busy too." Shin-Hye pressed on. "But, doesn't this wedding make you think about, maybe, your own?"

"Aiishiii omoni! Why do you keep bringing that up? I told you, I don't know if I want to get married." Ga Eul groaned and walked to the next stall.

Shin-Hye remembered when Geum Jian Di attended the Shinwha academy. Her daughter's face puckered with bitterness when she talked about a group of "rich jerks" who bullied Jian Di with pranks and public shaming. Shin-Hye noted wistfully that Ga Eul didn't seem to have a fascination with marrying a rich husband, like the daughters of other mothers, soybean paste girls. After all their money went towards designer clothing and purses, all they could afford to eat was soybean paste. No, her daughter was not that kind of a girl.

When Ga Eul was born, she was a serious baby that would only laugh when her father blew out his cheeks like a puffer fish. Shin-Hye's felt the corners of tug back at the image. She glanced at Ga Eul, who was stood at the edge of a stall, investigating a huge onggi with the design of a fish on the side. Her husband was a stiff man around everyone except his infant daughter. When Ga Eul grew up, he receded more into his shell as she became more and more independent. He distanced himself from his daughter the same way he distanced himself from everyone else. But for a few brief years, Shin-Hye's memories of Ga Eul and her father were warm, as cozy as thick woolen mittens.

Ga Eul stomped around the next stall, fuming that her mother had all but asked for a wedding date. Truthfully, she did not know exactly know what was going to happen in the next few months with Anders. He would be finished with defending his dissertation in December, right around the time of Jian Di's wedding to Jun Pyo. They had avoided the subject, dancing around its implications, and part of Ga Eul knew that whatever happened in December was likely to determine the rest of her relationship with Anders. She dreaded it. There was always a lingering voice in the back of her head that wished he was Korean, because as much as he loved Seoul, his people and his home would always be Sweden. She didn't want to push him away just because she doubted that he would be happy. She her lips and felt the chapped skin. She didn't know what to do.

"Ga Eul."

Shocked, she bit down on her lip and felt the air punched out of her chest. She contemplated running back to the car. No, she was an adult. She had to turned around.

A cloud of cold air hid Yi Jeong's face for a second. But there was no mistaking the timber of his voice. Yi Jeong smiled crookedly at her and rocked forward. The air froze around them for the short second that he hungrily drank her in. Her nose was bright pink, her ears tipped a solid dark rose, and she looked delightfully mad to see him. He hadn't felt this happy in weeks.

Please continue reading here http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8663756/11/Love-and-Luck